The Sun model of beefy server, ultra-thin client worked incredibly well and presaged the widespread adoption of virtualisation that eventually led to cloud computing and containerised software. Unfortunately that model made it very easy to undercut their prices using commodity hardware; I managed a Solaris/Sun Ray network c.2004 and it was cheaper to switch to Linux/Intel and buy spare hardware to keep in a cupboard “just in case” than to keep the Sun network going through its support contract.
the lab I was at got on this train right around the beginning of the sparc architecture. yellow pages. nfs based swap, nfs based boot. 10Mbit thinnet. we suffered for a few months and then moved to xterms for the cheap seats (which was a much better place to cut services) and went back to buying self-sufficient workstations.
the best was having everyone with a disk cross-mount each other. any failure snowballed into a global failure.
grahamlee · · focus · HN ↗
jeffbee · · focus · HN ↗
convolvatron · · focus · HN ↗
the best was having everyone with a disk cross-mount each other. any failure snowballed into a global failure.